Death Grip
by FallingNarwhals
Summary: He died with his right hand clutched around a gun, his last weapon and line of defense. His right hand was locked in a death grip, and nothing could remove the gun from his hand. Rated T for character deaths.


**Hello.**

 **This is my first attempt at down-right angst, so I hope it's alright.**

 **Rated T for character deaths.**

 **Disclaimer: I don't think I own this... Otherwise it would have been back up on the air long before.**

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When they found him, his hand was locked around an ecto-gun. It was dull and battered, the ecto-cartilage empty.

When they found him, he was defiantly dead. He had a clean hole going through his chest, the gravel of the street perfectly visible on the other side.

When they found him, there was nothing they could do. They dug through his wallet and called his parents, and left a message on the voice mail.

"Hey, this is Jack Fenton. We can't come to the phone, so if you have a ghost problem, leave a message-"

When they found him, the brought him straight to the morgue. They tried to pry the weapon from his hand, but they couldn't. He had a death grip on the small object, and the caretaker knew what that meant.

But his assistant didn't. His assistant, new to the strange ways of the dead body, tried to pry the gun from his grip. And when he did, the foolish assistant broke the smallest finger on the body of the boy.

It broke with a sickening crack and hung at a strange and wrong angle. The assistant covered his mouth, and his stomach churned.

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When his parents and sister finally found him, they could only stare in shock. They knew a ghost had attacked their son, their boy, their brother, their Danny but they were still rather shocked at how much damage their son's body retained before finally giving out.

There were tiny scratches everywhere on the child's body, the dried blood washed away but staining his clothes. Deep gashes with scabs just healing over them and peeling off, rubbing away into dusty gray bits. A foul smell wafted upwards towards the family, rotten from the entire day being dead and unmoving, the stained ectoplasm giving it a sharp metallic pang mixed in with the unmistakable smell of decay.

And Danny's hands were still locked in the death grip around his last protection that somehow failed him.

They told him they found several ectoplasm entities around the boy, most unmoving as if passed out, but one crying. Crying, and screaming names.

When they asked which ghost it was, they only replied with a simple "Phantom."

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The funeral was rather small, but every single person had tears in their eyes. The best friends in the front row along with the family were the ones sobbing through the entire service, as the preacher rambled on about a boy he'd never even met.

Tucker was in rage. He was mad that he let his ghost powers shorten out, he was mad that his tech couldn't save him, he was so mad at the preacher saying things he doesn't believe, about his best friend being a hero, how he saved lives, how he was a friend.

Danny was more then that. Danny wasn't just a hero, he was a protector. He just didn't save an entire block, he saved the entire city. He was more then just a friend, he was a loved brother, a boy that they hung out with after school, a person that lived, felt, breathed, laughed, cried. A person that loves life to the fullest. A brother who was loved by his sister. A son that was loved by his parents. A best friend that was loved by the both of them.

And now he was gone. One minute he was there, laughing along with them as he beat them again at a video game, and then he just vanished. Gone. And he won't come back.

When they gazed at his dead face for the last time, he didn't look like he ever lived. His face was blank, the lips a faded purple. He was in the same suit he had worn to the dance so long ago, the only dance he'd ever shared with Sam.

He looked uncomfortable, as if he was shoved in the wooden coffin unwillingly. His coffin (Tucker had to repeat that a few times, just to make it real) was lined with soft silk, that a real Danny would have upturned his nose at, calling it "Too prim and proper," or "Looks like it belongs to a snotty rich person."

Danny would have not wanted to be buried in that, or in a suit with such happy memories. He would have preferred something simple, something low key.

His right hand was the one where everyone's eyes automaticity went to. His hands were gripped around a battered handgun, dripping with splotches of dried ectoplasm.

"The death grip is a person's last hope as they die. Holding as tightly as it can, the longer the death, the tighter the grip." According to some research Tucker had done that night.

Danny had been dead for an hour when they found him.

"Results of trying to break the death grip can include broken bones to the body-"

Danny's finger was twisted. Danny's finger, which was not broken when he died, was broken now.

"And sometimes leads to the body being buried or cremated with the object in hand-"

They buried him with Danny's last hope. They buried him with the gun.

And from then, the tears really started to flow.

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"Sam! Sam, it's Danny!" Tucker shouted, pointing to a familiar ghostly tail battling a ghost in the sky.

"Tucker-" Sam shook her head in disbelief. "It just can't. That can't be him!"

The ghost Danny was battling finally disappeared into the blueish net of the Fenton Thermos, and the specter touched down on the street.

Sam had tears in her eyes. "Danny! Oh Tucker, it's him! It's Danny!"

She broke away from Tucker's grasp, towards the shade dressed in a skintight jumpsuit and flaming white hair.

Wait. Flaming. Hair of fire. Too late, Tucker cried out for Sam to come back, because that wasn't Danny, that wasn't their friend-

When Danny raised his right hand, the right hand still clutching the ecto-gun with the pinky finger hanging off at an unnatural angle, and pulled the trigger.

Sam and Tucker could only stare at the perfect circle in her chest before she collapsed into a heap, spraying bright red blood onto Danny's boots.

And Danny, who was defiantly not Danny now, only looked on with blazing red eyes.

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 **Eh, hope that's alright.**

 **I'm just kinda tired of writing a lot of happy fics... This kinda helped me get some crap off my chest. Yay for me -_-**

 **So, review please! I hope that didn't suck as much as I thought it would.**

 **-FallingNarwhals**


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